High School Sports Blog

Aledo’s Johnathan Gray becomes third player in nation to score 1,000-plus points, moves into top 3 in rushing in Texas

Week after week, Aledo running back Johnathan Gray is putting on record-breaking performances as if it’s commonplace.

Last week, in a six-touchdown performance in Aledo’s 73-30 win over Fort Worth Boswell, Gray passed a few more landmarks.

He became just the third high school player in the nation to break the 1,000-point barrier, with a 36-point outburst putting his career total at 1,028 — just behind No. 2 on the list, former North Carolina State running back T.A. McLendon (1,076).

Gray’s 243 rushing yards, on an absurd 14 carries, moved him into third in rushing yards in Texas history, with a career total of 8,883 moving him past Calallen’s Wes Danaher (8,855).

Gray has rushed for 1,880 yards on just 130 carries, averaging a mind-boggling 14.46 yards per carry.

Earlier this season, Gray broke Cayuga RB Traylon Shead’s state mark for touchdowns and the Texas career-points record of Sugarland’s Ken Hall.

According to the National High School Sports Record Book, Gray is now just 218 points behind the all-time record holder — former Michigan Wolverine and Indianapolis Colt Mike Hart, who scored 1,246 points at Nedrow Onondaga (NY) from 2000-03.

That’s a huge gap — 36 1/3 touchdowns — more than most players score in their careers, but Gray might have an outside shot, as ridiculous as that sounds with just three games left in the regular season. But, if Gray can keep his current scoring pace, and Aledo can make it to the Class 4A Division I final, as it has for the last two seasons, it’s possible. Gray has not had a game with fewer than four scores all season, scoring 36 in seven games (a clip of 5.14 per game).

If Gray does manage to break the all-time scoring record, a lot of other records would fall by the wayside. It would shatter Ken Hall’s single-season state scoring record (395 points, 1953), pass McClendon’s national single-season record of 71 touchdowns, and put Gray close to the nation’s single-season points holder, Sheridan (Ind.) running back Brett Law (453 points, 1988).

Even the Texas rushing record seems assailable, albeit under the same constructs. Gray’s career total of 8,883 yards is 2,349 behind the Hall’s record. A large total, surely, but assuming nine more games, that’s 261 yards per game. Gray is averaging 268 yards per game at this point.